Your Q1 ETF Scorecard

The first quarter of 2014 is history, and now it’s time to do a little review of the various sector exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to show how the market performed during the past three volatile months.

The first thing to note when looking at the performance table below of representative sector ETFs is that there was little actual movement in the major domestic equities such as the S&P 500, the Dow and the NASDAQ 100 in Q1. Despite a down January and an upbeat February, the markets are just about where they were at the start of the year.

Internationally, we saw a big sell-off in the China stock market, but most of that damage occurred in the first 10 weeks of the year. Over the past couple of weeks, stocks in China and in emerging markets have seen a marked comeback, as evidenced by the chart below of the iShares China Large-Cap ETF (FXI).